Model from Vice Suicide Shoot Speaks Out

The Internet went into riot-mode early this week when Vice released a fashion spread entitled "Last Words" (which has since been removed from its website) from its Women in Fiction issue. The theme? Female writers who had committed suicide, depicted at the moment of their demise--while simultaneously showcasing the latest designer clothing. Pure class.
Jezebel's Jenna Sauers spoke to Paige Morgan, the model who portrayed beat poet Elise Cowen in the editorial, to find out whether the faces of the controversial shoot knew what they were getting into. The revelations made in their conversation speak as much to Vice's lack of judgment as it does to the treatment of models in the fashion industry as a whole.

The Internet went into riot-mode early this week when Vice released a fashion spread entitled "Last Words" (which has since been removed from its website) from its Women in Fiction issue. The theme? Female writers who had committed suicide, depicted at the moment of their demise--while simultaneously showcasing the latest designer clothing. Pure class.
Jezebel's Jenna Sauers spoke to Paige Morgan, the model who portrayed beat poet Elise Cowen in the editorial, to find out whether the faces of the controversial shoot knew what they were getting into. The revelations made in their conversation speak as much to Vice's lack of judgment as it does to the treatment of models in the fashion industry as a whole.

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Morgan's Vice shot. Photo: Annabel Mehran

The Internet went into riot-mode early this week when Vice released a fashion spread entitled "Last Words" (which has since been removed from its website) from its Women in Fiction issue. The theme? Female writers who had committed suicide, depicted at the moment of their demise--while simultaneously showcasing the latest designer clothing. Pure class.

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Jezebel's Jenna Sauers spoke to Paige Morgan, the model who portrayed beat poet Elise Cowen in the editorial, to find out whether the faces of the controversial shoot knew what they were getting into. The revelations made in their conversation speak as much to Vice's lack of judgment as it does to the treatment of models in the fashion industry as a whole.

According to Morgan, a 26-year-old who freelance models without an agency (and happens to be a journalism student), she wasn't fully aware of the spread's implications until she was already on set: "[The job ad] did mention that the theme was female writers that committed suicide--but it did not mention that they intended to do photographs of the actual acts of their deaths," she tells Sauers. Having suffered from depression herself, Morgan admits she was "uncomfortable" when she was eventually informed of the shoot's theme, but felt she wasn't at leisure to question it:

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"Unfortunately, I know very well that it's not my place or my job to ask, 'Well, what are you doing with this? Are you putting fashion credits on it? What's the title of this editorial going to be?' If they were to give me an answer at all, it would probably be, 'Get out.' At that point, even in New York City, the community is fairly small. And then it's going to be, 'She's difficult, she's unreliable, she showed up day of and walked out.'"

When asked whether she'd take the job now, knowing the full nature of the shoot, Morgan again speaks to the powerlessness of models: "If it had been that same or a similar image accompanying a retrospective of [Cowan's] life, or a discussion of her work--I might have still done it... unfortunately models aren't given that much context."

"[As a model,] you pose how you're told to pose, you wear what you're told to wear, you pose with who you're told to pose with — even in situations where someone is physically unsafe, or enduring sexual harassment, if you say, 'Stop, this is unsafe,' most often the person who bears the brunt of that is the model. The model is the person who has the least amount of power in the situation... In this industry, any sort of objection to a job is seen as you being 'difficult,' or you just purposefully creating 'drama.'"

Along with having her name now permanently attached to the uproar-causing shoot, Morgan received no compensation whatsoever for the job--which is apparently de rigueur for editorial models. Might Morgan end up blacklisted from the industry, and go down a martyr for speaking up about the general mistreatment of models off the runway? If it helps advance models' rights, it might just be the best thing to result from this whole Vice fiasco.

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First thing's first. I’m a woman, I’m a writer. That said: Let’s talk about Vice, its Women in Fiction issue, and the shocking “fashion” spread of women writers committing suicide. At first glance, the issue features short fiction by a talented, fresh writer, A.L. Major, and famous storytellers like Marilynne Robinson, Mary Gaitskill, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Then there’s this spread*, entitled “Last Words”—a photographic essay of sorts—of women writers before they meet death.
The beautification of females and death is nothing new--forms of pornography are devoted to it. Most gargantuan billboards in Times Square show dead-eyed models, lounging like corpses à la Tom Petty’s "Last Dance with Mary Jane" music video. What the French call petit mort, or “little death”, is an evocative euphemism for climax. My initial instinct is to attribute any work of art with layers of metaphor and meaning, contextualize it in a way that uncovers some truth I hadn’t seen.
I can’t do that with “Last Words.” These writers are completely stripped of their words.

Clips of Girl Model, the ominous looking documentary about a 13-year-old Siberian girl’s foray into the world of modeling, more than piqued our interest when they popped up in March. And while we’d explored the murky back story of the film, we’d yet to see it in it’s entirety. So, naturally, we jumped at the chance to watch the full film at a special ‘fashion industry’ screening last week, hosted by the Model Alliance at the Sunshine Theater in New York. So did industry insiders like Natalie Joos, Scott Lipps, Milla Jovovich, along with a slew of models.
Even before Girl Model was released, it caused quite a stir for touching upon such heated subjects as models’ ages, rights and working conditions, which the fashion industry has, in the past, tended to ignore or overlook. But thanks to organizations like the Model Alliance--and films like Girl Model--that's changing.
Models’ working conditions and rights are finally being addressed by people in positions to actually enforce changes. And after watching this film, it’s clear that this new found awareness is coming not a moment too soon. Read on for our take on the film, plus find out what Model Alliance directors Sara Ziff and Jenna Sauers had to say about it.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has just announced the finalists for the 2012 National Magazine Awards, and among the usual suspects (The New Yorker and New York), there were a few surprises.
For one, Vice received it's first ASME nom, for General Excellence no less, alongside The New Yorker, New York, Bloomberg Businessweek and GQ in the General-Interest Magazine category, which is kind of the equivalent for getting nominated for "Best Picture" at the Oscars. It's certainly a feat for the magazine which started out as an underground publication that prided itself on being anything but mainstream. We'd like to think it's all thanks to the mag's fascinating exploration of canine bondage, or their coverage of London fashion week on acid, but you know, that could be just us.
Also of note is that only two fashion titles--Glamour and W--got nods for General Excellence. W received more ASME nominations than any other fashion mag in 2011, and 2012's list confirms that EIC Stefano Tonchi is indeed on a roll--much to the chagrin of competitor Vogue, no doubt.

This year, Vice sent someone to London Fashion Week on acid. Yes, you read that right.
Vice convinced their friend Elektra to take a hit of acid and then sent her to the tents and then sat back and let the whole ridiculous, hilarious trip unfold in front of them. The show was Topshop Unique, and the observations were--as you can imagine--choice.
Here are some of our favorite parts from poor Elektra's trip: